of
playfulness and sadness.

'So I see, Miss Princess,' returned Curdie; 'and therefore, being more
of a princess, you are the more my princess. Here I am, sent by your
great-great-grandmother, to be your servant. May I ask why you are up
so late, Princess?'

'Because my father wakes so frightened, and I don't know what he would
do if he didn't find me by his bedside. There! he's waking now.'

She darted off to the side of the bed she had come from.

Curdie stood where he was.

A voice altogether unlike what he remembered of the mighty, noble king
on his white horse came from the bed, thin, feeble, hollow, and husky,
and in tone like that of a petulant child:

'I will not, I will not. I am a king, and I will be a king. I hate
you and despise you, and you shall not torture me!'

'Never mind them, Father dear,' said the princess. 'I am here, and
they shan't touch you. They dare not, you know, so long as you defy
them.'

'They want my crown, darling; and I can't give them my crown, can I?
For what is a king without his crown?'

'They shall never have your crown, my king,' said Irene. 'Here it
is--all safe. I am watching it for you.'

Curdie drew near the bed on the other side. There lay the grand old
king--he looked grand still, and twenty years older. His body was
pillowed high; his beard descended long and white over the crimson
coverlid; and his crown, its diamonds and emeralds gleaming in the
twilight of the curtains, lay in front of him, his long thin old hands
folded round it, and the ends of his beard straying among the lovely
stones. His face was like that of a man who had died fighting nobly;
but one thing made it dreadful: his eyes, while they moved about as if
searching in this direction and in that, looked more dead than his
face. He saw neither his daughter nor his crown: it was the voice of
the one and the touch of the other that comforted him. He kept
murmuring what seemed words, but was unintelligible to Curdie,
although, to judge from the look of Irene's face, she learned and
concluded from it.

By degrees his voice sank away and the murmuring ceased, although still
his lips moved. Thus lay the old king on his bed, slumbering with his
crown between his hands; on one side of him stood a lovely little
maiden, with blue eyes, and brown hair going a little back from her
temples, as if blown by a wind that no one felt but herself; and on the
other a stalwart young miner, with his